Amish Friendship Bread

Amish Friendship Bread is a funny thing. It's like a chain letter... except with bread.

It happened like this: One day, one of my coworkers offered me a little bag of goop dough. She said, "Look! It's Amish Friendship Bread! Would you like a starter bag?" I eyed the bag suspiciously. She assured me that, in the end, it would be tasty bread and says she has a loaf over at her desk and that I'm welcome to try some if I'd like.

my starter bag

I have vague memories of having this bread before.. (I think my mom may have done it once or twice while I was growing up) so I knew that, while the stuff in the bag looked a little strange and smelled a little funny, it wasn't deadly. And when I did take my coworker up on her offer to try some of her bread, it was quite tasty. So, encouraged, I took a bag home and followed the instructions looking forward to the day that I would have my very own tasty bread.

The little bag came with a page of instructions that consist of exciting things like: "DO NOT REFRIGERATE!" and "It is normal for the batter to rise, bubble and ferment."

That didn't instill me with confidence.. but I HAD tried my coworker's bread, so I went forward with faith.

In general, making bread is a pretty time consuming process: mix the ingredients together, let it rise for an hour, punch it down, let it rise.... Amish Friendship Bread takes it to new level. This is a 10 day process. Happily, it's not labor intensive. Pretty much you "mush the bag" once a day for 10 days, occasionally adding a few more ingredients, including milk and then you leave it out on the counter until the 10th day. That is when it gets very exciting.

On the final day, you add a bunch more flour, sugar and milk, split the dough into four new starter bags (which I now have to find friends to give them away to so they can experience all this for themselves) and THEN you make some bread.

Gathering the ingredients...

The instructions specifically say not to use any type of metal to mix or cook.. only I needed two bread pans and only one of mine is non-metal, so I used them both anyway. (turns out the glass one cooked better.. guess they knew what they were talking about)

Bake for one hour and VOILA! You get bread!
Even my skeptic hubby (concerned by the milk part of the ingredients that'd been sitting out for 10 days) agrees that it is VERY tasty!


Anybody want a starter bag?